To Break Through or To Be Restricted?How and When Team Territorial Climate Affects Team Performance

Abstract

Previous research addressed territoriality from an individual level and highlighted the importance of extending the analysis to teams or organizations. Though with its great value, less is known about how to define territoriality from the team level and uncover its influences on team processes and outcomes. Grounded in the appropriateness framework, this study captured the climate of team territoriality (i.e., territorial climate), tested the relationship between territorial climate and team performance, and explored the mediating roles of help giving and seeking. We further proposed that territorial climate would interact with intra-team and inter-team competitions to influence the helping interactions. As we adapted the territoriality scale to capture the shared perception of whether team members exhibit territorial behaviors, Study 1was employed to validate the scale of team territorial climate. Study 2 (i.e., a field study) was used to test the theoretical model, and the results revealed that team members in highly territorial climate would be less likely to display help giving and seeking behaviors; the ineffective helping interactions would thereafter hamper team performance. In addition, intra-team and inter-team competition can separately (i.e., two-way interaction) and jointly (i.e., three-way interaction) affect the relationship between territorial climate and team performance. The negative effect of territorial climate on help giving/ seeking was more pronounced when either intra-team competition was high (vs. low) or inter-team competition was low (vs. high), and this negative relationship became the strongest when both intra-team competition was high and inter-team competition was low.